


Strange Geometry

by ancarett



Category: Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft, Holmes on Homes RPF
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 12:53:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/597980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ancarett/pseuds/ancarett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's something seriously wrong with the old Atwood house. Just how do you close a portal to a plane of eldritch power? Mike knows how to make it right!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strange Geometry

**Author's Note:**

  * For [David Hines (hradzka)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hradzka/gifts).



Mike shivered as he trotted briskly up the wobbly stairs of the neglected brownstone. "Brr," he commented to the _Holmes Makes It Right_ camera crew, close behind him on the walkway. "Is it just me? Or is this place really uninviting?"

Headshakes showed agreement as the wind howled around the corner lot and whistled through the freshly-painted wrought iron fence that separated this house from the rest on the block. Faint shades of green and healthy bushes decorated the other yards while the yard behind them and the porch were equally uninspired shades of sickly brown. Mike nodded ruefully as the wind chittered around them and then he shoved his hands into the pockets of his brown jacket, waiting on the cameraman's call.

"You're good? Okay, let's roll." The burly celebrity contractor flexed his right hand to warm up the muscles and then rang the doorbell. It opened promptly and a haggard young couple peered out in relief.

"James and Nancy Atwood, am I right?" Mike asked. "Mike Holmes, here."

The haggard and pregnant brunette half-collapsed against her husband who held out his free hand for Mike Holmes to shake. "Come in," James Atwood urged nervously, "we're so glad you're here to help us."

"It's my pleasure. Just let me see what your problem is," Mike began as he signalled the camera crew to follow him inside the house that he could tell would be their next big project. The Atwoods stepped back into the dark hallway, lit by the glow of a single, feeble fixture high above. To the right, an old-fashioned library with shelves full of books enticed the eye. Mike spared that barely a glance before moving along the hall towards the decrepit and half-demolished kitchen at the rear of the house. The chill seemed to build, even when the camera crew closed the front door.

"You'd said that you'd had someone in to work on the basement," Mike prompted as the pair stood uneasily by the basement door. "Why don't you show me?"

Nancy stepped uneasily away from the entrance. "James, why don't you take him down and show him? I'm not up to it right now. . . ."

Her voice trailed away and her concerned husband patted her gently on the shoulder. "Why don't you go over to the coffee shop down the street and warm up there?" James suggested. "I'll take care of things here with Mike and the crew."

Her smile was the brightest point in the house as she quickly turned to the back door, heels clattering on concrete as she speedily vacated the building. "Smart idea," Mike said, "since I can tell you have no heat in the house. Tell me you're not living here at the moment!"

James shook his head dismissively. "No, we're still staying with my in-laws most of the time. We inherited the house in the spring from my great-uncle, who'd lived here since his own father died on some expedition to Antarctica. Great-uncle Joe hadn't done a thing to the house in years except reshingle. We hired a contractor to redo the second-floor bathroom, the kitchen and to dig down the basement so we could add a family room and a half-bath. Only, well, let me show you."

The basement door handle turned with an ominous creak. James flicked on the lightswitch beside the door and a string of incandescent bulbs lit the shabby staircase down into what was clearly an unfinished basement. Mike trotted quickly down the stairs in his wake, ducking his head to avoid the low beam at the foot and whistling silently as he surveyed the mess that lay before him. "We'll wait for the crew to set up down here and you can show me, okay James?"

The homeowner nodded wearily and the camera crew quickly set up a pair of lights close to the stairs. The bright light only made the wreck from half-completed digging and scattered construction materials all the more distressing. "Wow, they really left you guys in a mess, didn't they?" Mike commented. "Okay, tell me all about it."

While the cameras rolled, James Atwood laid out the sadly familiar tale of a reno gone wrong. He and his wife had wanted to update his great-uncle's neglected house in the city's downtown core. They'd asked for bids and even checked up on contractors. "This guy looked really good and gave us a really detailed quote as well as a timeline," James concluded glumly. "But, then, well, this happened."

Mike stepped gingerly forward into the disaster zone. "Watch that," he cautioned with one finger sharply pointed to a wire dangling just ahead. "Knob and tube. Probably live."

His ruddy face screwed into a frown, Mike laid a small detector against the thick, gray cable's rough end. "Yup. That's live."

Holmes' frown only deepened as he peered around the corner of the basement where a depression gurgled sullenly, oily water glistening in the television lights and reflecting a warped door sitting slightly askew just beyond it. "That's some strange geometry there," he muttered.

The homeowner sighed gustily and shivered slightly in the dank dampness of the basement. "We knew there was a lot of that kind of mess. Great-uncle Joe's dad was a professor of physics as well as a bit of an adventurer. He did all sorts of tinkering on the place in the 20s before he died. My dad even told me that he'd heard about some secret compartments full of hidden treasure or monsters. I was never sure which! Anyway, once the workers dug down the basement so we'd have more headroom and laid in some new footings for the structural joists, the contractor promised that they were going to pull all the knob and tube up to the second floor. But, well, they just disappeared on the third day of the job."

Mike nodded warily. "We get a lot of that. Contractor takes your down-payment, does a little work and then head off. Usually they don't leave a couple thousand dollars of supplies and equipment when they take off, though."

"Or their trucks," James added. At Mike's start of surprise, he elaborated. "We came in about five o'clock and all their vehicles were still parked on the street in front of the house, the back door was open and all the lights were on. Nobody was around and the police eventually towed their vehicles and now they tell us they're treating this as a missing persons case."

Mike rubbed at his chin thoughtfully. "Now, that's a new one!"

The younger man shifted his feet nervously. "Does it scare you off? We haven't been able to hire another contractor to continue the job. They're all spooked. I think the word out is that some sort of serial killer or curse was at work here so, well, we're kind of stuck."

Mike Holmes' face broke into a characteristic grin. "Now, don't you worry. It'll take more than that to scare us off. I'm going to do a thorough walk-through, well, as thorough as I can until we can drain out that pond over there and maybe bring in an engineer to shore up the foundation. There's a lot wrong with this place but I guarantee, right here, right now, that I'm going to make it right."

The relieved homeowner smiled brightly enough to vie with the camera crew's lights making for a great closing shot to the sequence. As the crew began to shift their equipment in order to take a few more shots of the crew's next big project, no one heard Mike's muttered addendum: "That is, if we live to tell the tale."

***

"Holmes, buddy," Damon said warily as he slammed the door closed on his truck and ambled towards his silent boss, "I've got a bad feeling about this one." The crew chief stopped to give the old brownstone a long and considering look.

"You're telling me," Mike said as he signalled the hauler to carefully back up another meter in order to off-load the dumpster on the hardscrabble surface that passed for a side yard. Beside the back steps, a load of cement blocks occupied all the other available space. "Normally, I'd have the camera crew and a whole mess of people here on day one but, well, let's just say we have a situation. So, today? It's just you, me and Billy. We'll see if we're still standing at the end of the day because this house is the worst trouble you'll ever see."

"Really?" Damon breathed, rocking back on his heels to regard the house even more carefully. Certainly, the roof was worn and he wouldn't be surprised if they needed to rebuild the chimney but things didn't look that bad.

Mike chuckled. "Not up. Down. Way down, if I'm right and I'm afraid I am. I did a bit of digging around the day I came out and _not_ literally. This is the scariest job you'll ever see and I'm going to show you why as well as how to deal with this kind of trouble."

Their conversation died down as they checked out the dumpster and thanked the hauler who carefully turned onto the tree-lined city street. The two men then turned to cautiously consider the building, Mike crossing his arms over his broad chest. "Tell me, Damon, what do you know of the Elder Things or the Old Ones?"

***

"Anyone but you, Holmes, and I'd say you were pulling my leg. Really, this kind of craziness exists?" Damon's face was blanched white as he gratefully accepted the cup of coffee Billy shoved into his hands.

"It's that bad, Damon," Billy added. "We've seen, what?, just two or three houses with problems like this since I started working with Mike, here but you hear tell in the business." The burly, older man shuddered and took a quick sip of his coffee.

Mike put his double-double down on the cement blocks and frowned. "Not nearly enough if these guys didn't call for help but tried to actually open the portal."

Billy rolled his eyes. "Kids these days. Think they know everything."

"Well they didn't and we're lucky that whatever was on the other side didn't come through. Can you imagine downtown Toronto dealing with that?" Both of them shuddered at that and Damon threw back the last of his-too hot coffee before offering a nervous smile.

"Um, so, how do we make sure that _we_ don't have to deal with that, Holmes, old buddy?" Damon asked.

"First off, no one goes down alone. We take a break every twenty minutes to limit exposure and we wear these polarizing goggles. That'll help reduce the risk." Damon eyed the plastic dubiously but obediently accepted the modified safety goggles.

"But what are we actually doing there?" Damon persisted.

Mike hefted a cement block and grinned widely. "We're going to brick that portal up and make it disappear forever."

Damon grabbed two blocks and followed his boss into the cold, unsettling house. "This, I gotta see."

***

It took them an hour, including breaks, to move all the supplies into the basement where a sump pump that Billy and Mike had already installed was humming away in the dry but still disturbing space. Two jack posts supported a laminated beam that helped to keep the sagging joists from dropping further.

As Damon and Billy brought in the last of the supplies, Mike looked up from where he'd snapped a chalk line on the clean-swept floor. "I told the homeowners that we had a foundation issue, which isn't all that far off. His relative did a number on the foundation when he built this portal and, look at that framing! No lintel. That's shoddy work. No wonder the house has been uninhabitable: it's not just structure, it's messing with people's sanity."

Billy grumbled that Mike was due for another break before he did something stupid like starting to tinker with the portal, all the while he mixed the mortar they needed to secure the concrete wall they were building just in front of the strangely compelling, shoddy door and the crumbling foundation wall. Damon grabbed a couple of trowels from the small cache of masonry tools he'd assembled in the corner, all the while casting a worried look at his boss.

Mike glared at them before his face shifted into a rueful smile. "You're right. I'll take a break, go call MJ and see how they're going on the plumbing at the other project."

"You do that," Billy admonished. "Damon and I will keep an eye on each other. But go down to Tim's and get us both something, wouldya?"

As Mike thundered out the back door, Billy turned to Damon, confidingly. "These portals are tricky. You've got to watch yourself and each other. I'm pretty sure that's what happened with the poor guys who came before us. Kids! They didn't know what it was, had to mess with it, probably cracked it open and got sucked in. Others who just see what's on the other side of these things? I hear they go mad."

The older man shuddered. "The homeowners are just lucky Mike saw this and knew what to do. Come on, we can lay the first course before we need to take our break."

The two set to work with grim determination, laying the first blocks for a sturdy foundation all the while they carefully looked anywhere else but at the door that seemed to twist and pulsate just in front of them.

***

Holmes returned with coffee and bagels, sharing the story of his phone call with MJ. "Apparently the job is taking a little longer: Martin found the clay pipe was pretty well compromised by the tree roots, just like we thought. So they're busy enough not to be wondering what we're up to here."

Billy nodded around a mouthful of bagel while Damon stamped his feet against the cold. "It's been ten," Damon noted, "why don't you and I go back inside, Mike, see if we can lay another course while you take a break, Billy?"

The older man chuckled. "Don't worry about me. I know that Mike'll keep an eye out but, sure. Someone needs to start packing up that library so I'll start in."

Leaping to his feet with spry energy that belied his years, Billy disappeared into the house. Mike laughed at Damon's dumbfounded expression. "I'd forgotten to mention that. We know there's probably a book or two in that collection that's no one wants people reading. Billy and I, we've been exposed enough to sense what these things are and have enough sense not to want to open one. We need to get to the pipes, anyway, so moving the books and disposing of one or two at the same time just helps everyone out."

Damon blinked and slowly nodded in a way that indicate acceptance if not understanding. Before Mike could lead the way back into the house, he asked, "Why me? Why not MJ or Carlito or any of the other guys?"

Mike's habitual easy grin faded. "Come with me to the library and you'll see." The two made their way through the rundown, dingy kitchen where a cold, dank presence still seemed to lurk.

"Hey, Billy, we thought we'd lend you a hand here and help explain to Damon what this is all about." Mike unfolded a box and gestured Damon to step up closer to the shelves of musty, leather-bound books. "Judging who can and can't manage a situation like this is a gut call but, first and foremost, age helps. Kids, guys in their twenties, even early thirties, are more vulnerable. If you're grounded, settled, got something in life more important to you than money and adventure and fame, that helps."

Billy snorted. "And with books, here, you get people who're curious, sticking their noses in and opening their minds to things they shouldn't. That's what got all those eggheads down at that East Coast university in the 20s. They went off exploring, looking for secrets that they read about in books."

Mike sighed. "I did a little genealogy research last night. Our homeowner's great-great-uncle was one of those eggheads. He disappeared on an Antarctic expedition but not before he left this problem."

Looking at the shelves in front of them, he whistled warily. "At least after we clear all of this up and close that portal, we can bring in the rest of the crew. It'll be like night and day."

Damon grabbed another three books off the shelves and dropped them into the packing box while Mike steadily removed old textbooks from the lower shelves. Billy lifted his hands to the waist-height shelf again and froze. "Here's one, Mike."

"Son of a gun," his nephew whispered. "You were right." He pulled heavy gloves out of his back pocket, slipped them on and pulled it off the shelf.

"What is it?" Damon asked, half in frustration and worry.

"Don't know exactly and don't really want to know," Billy muttered. "But it's part and parcel of that portal downstairs we're blocking up. Probably one of old Professor Atwood's things. We have to destroy it."

Mike nodded decisively. "There's one of those crappy fake firepits on that poor excuse for a back patio. We'll burn it there."

"Don't use all the lighter fluid," Billy cautioned. "There'll be more, I feel it." He regarded the half-empty bookshelves with a wary eye and sighed heavily.

Mike smiled as he turned away, book carefully held in front of him. "I know. But break time soon. Don't get cocky."

"You don't live long if you do," Billy agreed.

Damon gingerly reached for some books to start filling the box that Mike had abandoned. Each one that he touched felt like any other old book. They smelled like old paper and aged leather. He shrugged and dropped them into the box, straightening with a start as he saw Billy's patient smile.

"I shoulda told Mike to let you hold that one for a minute. Once you feel it, you know it," Billy explained as he chucked a range of old almanacs into his box before efficiently folding over the top flaps.

Damon shook his head as he prepped a new box for Billy and then returned to filling his own. "I'd rather not."

"That's what'll keep you safe," Billy replied approvingly. They worked in silence until Mike rejoined them.

***

They had laid three courses and were taking another break. One part of Damon chafed at the delay: he was used to working right through on long jobs whenever Mike set the crew loose. Another part of him, and one he noticed was mirrored in Mike's and Billy's demeanour, was freakishly happy to be away from that unnatural door. He'd caught himself yearning to reach one hand to the rough edge of the unfinished wood that hung so limply against the crumbling foundation wall of the old Atwood house. Billy had slapped it quickly down against the top of the block they'd just secured and nodded sharply towards the stairs. "Break time," he barked and Mike meekly agreed.

Now, perched on the crumbling back stoop, the three men shoved up their special safety goggles and breathed in the fresh, cool, restoring outside air. Billy and Mike both lifted their faces to the pale sun's feeble glow but Damon couldn't be so relaxed.

"How do you know?" he asked anxiously, regarding each of the older men in turn.

"That this will work?" Mike asked without turning, his eyes close and his face peacefully tilted skyward.

Billy seemed to take pity on Damon's nerves. "It's in the lore and the way of the true builder. We stand opposed to those who'd meddle in the walls between the worlds. They build monstrosities, we restore order," he explained.

"But that's just it," Damon exploded. "Sure, we're building a good foundation wall but that's only a wall. There's still a door beyond that!"

"Damon, what makes a door a door?" Mike asked. It was said softly and quietly, in the fashion he always used on a job site to show that this was an important question. Damon bounced up from the stoop and began to pace impatiently across the bleak, grey pad that passed for a backyard at the dismal old house.

"A door's a door, a way to get between two places," Damon began. The frowns he saw made him stop and raise a questioning eyebrow.

"That's a doorway you're talking about, not a door," Billy observed. "A door block the passage between two places."

Mike smiled at his uncle, rising to join Damon standing in the tepid sunlight. "That's the important part, Damon. We're just making this a better door, don't you see?"

Billy rolled his shoulders and rose stiffly from the low concrete step before joining in the conversation, "When we're building this wall we're turning that door from a temptation into a protection. I worked on a job like this when I was a youngster like you and damned if the thing didn't just disappear as soon as we blocked it off."

"Bingo," Mike punctuated. "You close in the doorway with a proper wall, square and true and solid, and these makeshift portals just unravel. Damned good thing that no Old One's every corrupted a real builder."

Billy chuckled nervously. "And don't you go giving them ideas, Mike. We need to finish that wall, dispel that portal and then we can get onto the rest of the job."

With that, the three men made their way back into the house, all the while listening to, and occasionally debating, Mike's plans to repair and improve the old Atwood home.

***

At the end of two long days (and a longer night populated for Damon with the worst nightmares he could ever recall), they'd cleared the library and were laying the last course of cement blocks, ready to support the beefed-up joists of the aging house's first floor. "This'll be the hardest," Mike advised as he concentrated on sliding the first block in on the left-hand side. "These kind of forces? They kind of fight you when they sense they're being cut off."

"Great," Damon muttered weakly as he maneuvered the second block into position, troweling mortar that oozed forward with more energy than gravity could explain.

Billy clapped him on the shoulder as he slid the tub of mortar along the floor. "Keep at it and Mike'll buy you the best steak dinner-"

"That you can get at Harvey's," his nephew qualified as he slipped the next block into place.

Damon grinned. "Hey, I like cheap burgers! At this point, I'd settle for stale donuts if we can just get this done right."

"Stale donuts it is," Mike promised as he helped Damon slide in the next block. The two men pushed hard to get it into place and mortared another in beside it.

"Hold it," Billy directed, and he reached up with his trowel to wedge a bit more mortar into the joint. The two younger men pushed against the blocks, carefully not looking toward the edge of the portal's upper limit, visibly pulsing above the line of arrow-straight concrete. "We're almost there."

"Do we need to stop for another break?" Damon asked as he held the block for a long minute while the concrete seemed to tremble erratically.

"Not at this point," Mike said. "We need to power through and close this off now or things could get nasty. Once it's blocked off, there won't be any more problems. Let's move on to the next ones now."

Grimly, the three men redoubled their efforts to complete the wall. Each block seemed to weigh more and the last few were placed more by feel than by careful sighting. But with three master-builders, that didn't amount to a millimetre of difference. Still, when the last one slipped into place, it was as if the entire home exhaled in sudden relief. Mike, Billy and Damon broke into triumphant grins.

"Let's call it a night," Mike commanded. "Here, take off your goggles now, too. It's safe. Just clean up the tools here and we'll lock up. Monday we can bring in the full crew. I'll get the camera crew to come in, too. Then we can start getting some real work done!"

Billy glanced up from where he was wiping off the long level they'd been using. "Not going to mention this part of the job, are you?"

"Nobody'd believe us if we did, right?" Damon prompted the older men. Although he'd appreciated that release of the foreboding they'd all worked through over the past few days, a part of him couldn't believe it was that easy.

Mike tsked at that. "The problem is, someone would. They'd want to start looking for things, for trouble. Maybe not here but somewhere and the whole problem would start all over again. No, we just tell them that us old guys wanted to have a little fun and get the job started while they were on the other site."

He turned to regard the solid and stolid concrete wall they'd erected. "Nice and solid and true. No more strange geometry now that the portal's been purged. Plus? It's a damned fine foundation wall that'll carry the load of the rest of the house, the way it should."

Damon had to agree that the house felt, well, normal now if not right. Now all the problems that he could sense were ordinary ones he could see without discomfort: plumbing, electrical and compromised structure left by the unfortunate contractors they'd followed. There was nothing of that otherworldly unease that had plagued them throughout the job.

"See you at the truck," Billy said as he grabbed their polarized safety goggles and headed toward the stairs, leaving Damon and Mike to bring up the rest of the tools.

Mike wiped his hands with a satisfied smile before turning to the other man. "Now, I believe that I owe you some donuts?"

Damon laughed. "You just try faking me out with that, old man. I don't need a steak dinner but an Angus Burger? That'd do just fine."

**Author's Note:**

> Professor Atwood was a member of the Miskatonic University physics department and part of the ill-fated Lake expedition to the Antarctic chronicled in H. P. Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness." His Canadian connection is entirely my invention.
> 
> Mike Holmes is a Canadian icon. See if you can spot the other Can-con moments in this story.
> 
> Thanks to my awesome betas for timely advice. You will be repaid in Tim's.


End file.
